Read Chapter 23: — THE WOMAN BEHIND THE SCREEN

Mufeng never received a formal confession from Hua Suxian.

He did not need one.

The clues formed their own quiet history: the rare blood, the resemblance to Jiazhen, Hua's hidden tears, the handmade comb copied from Zhou Jinan's private sketchbook, Zhou's story of a wealthy young woman he had lost, the abandoned infant outside Li Mingtao's home.

Mufeng could imagine the shape of what had happened.

A young Hua Suxian had loved Zhou Jinan. Her family refused the match. Somewhere between family pressure, reputation and a marriage arranged around status, a child had become impossible to acknowledge. The child disappeared into another household. Years later, Hua found him.

Whether every detail of that reconstruction was correct no longer seemed urgent.

When Mufeng called her, they talked about Huashi, Jiazhen's treatment, art, and Suzhou weather.

"Aunt Hua," he said.

She always paused slightly when he used the title.

He never asked, Are you my mother?

She never said, Yes.

Mingtao remained his father in every way that had mattered while a child was hungry, frightened, sick, proud or reckless. Biology could enlarge Mufeng's history. It could not rewrite his childhood.

Professor Zhou remained someone Mufeng respected deeply. He did not confront him either.

Yonghe once asked whether that restraint was fear.

"Partly," Mufeng admitted. "And partly mercy. Truth is not automatically kind just because it is true."

"You used to hate ambiguity."

"I still do. I just hate hurting people for my own satisfaction more."

She smiled. "You really have changed."

"This is becoming insulting."

The embroidered screen from Qin's old office was eventually moved into Huashi's corporate museum as part of an exhibition on the company's history.

Mufeng visited once.

He stood behind it.

The space no longer frightened him.

He could picture Hua there, holding her breath, watching the son she had lost sit across from Qin and complain about tea.

The mysterious cough had never been supernatural.

It had been grief trying not to make a sound.